


a big, big world

by hockeydyke



Series: Samwell Women's Hockey [4]
Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: Argument about the legitimacy of khakis, College, F/F, Graduation, Nostalgia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-26
Updated: 2017-12-26
Packaged: 2019-02-22 05:42:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,697
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13160472
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hockeydyke/pseuds/hockeydyke
Summary: It's time for Samwell University Class of 2017 to graduate. But first, Jordan Kelly needs to find something to wear.Part of my December 2017 holiday prompt fills!





	a big, big world

The last few weeks leading up to graduation are a bit of a blur for Jordan. As soon as she pulls her grades up and actually does a little studying for her finals and it’s confirmed that she will be able to walk, she starts coasting along, a little bit high on the fact that she actually  _ is  _ graduating. It’d been a near thing, with the time she’d had to take off from classes when she’d centralized for Worlds in April. 

 

Apparently, though, coasting isn’t enough for graduation, according to Jordan’s mom and various friends. Not at all.

 

See, the nicest item of clothing that Jordan owns is her khakis, so she’d planned on wearing those and maybe a new t-shirt-- plain, no logo. She thinks she has some polish for her nicer boots, too, and maybe she’ll get around to doing that before graduation actually happens. 

 

Then her mom calls her up a week before the ceremony to ask Jordan to send a picture of the dress she’s wearing, and Jordan realizes that a t-shirt maybe isn’t going to cut it. 

 

“Uh,” Jordan says into the phone, pinning it to her shoulder with her ear while she stands up and opens her closet door, as if a dress has magically appeared in there since the last time she checked, “I wasn’t planning on wearing a dress, actually,”

 

She waits for the lecture, but her mom just sighs. “Do  _ not  _ wear your khakis.” 

 

“Okay, I won’t wear my khakis,” Jordan parrots, at a loss for words other than that. Maybe her mom is finally accepting that Jordan isn’t the kind of person who wears dresses. Or maybe she just figures that, well, she already had three daughters graduate wearing dresses, so it’s really not the end of the world if the fourth doesn’t.

 

They talk for another few minutes about unrelated things-- which car Jordan’s parents are taking up to Massachusetts, which family member the dogs are staying with, which of Jordan’s old high school teammates went and got married, etc. Mrs. Kelly hangs up when she remembers she has to drive over to the church to drop off a cookie tray, which leaves Jordan sprawled out on her bed with a very important task at hand.

 

She rolls off the bed and lands hard on her hands and knees. “Ow,” she says, then gets up to find someone she can consult. 

 

She can hear Lauren and Tyler in the kitchen, but they’re arguing again and she doesn’t want to get in the middle of that, so she heads upstairs to ask one of her frogs. Well. Sophomores now, and really almost juniors, but still-- they’re her frogs. 

 

“Briggsy! Lamb!” She bangs on each of their doors, waits a second, then enters Lamb’s room. IT’s empty. She backtracks out and checks Briggs’ room, and-- dammit. They must still be at their study group. One’s a Bio major and the other a Criminal Justice student, so Jordan has no idea how they keep ending up in the same classes. 

 

Her next option is texting Celeste, but Celeste is horrible when it comes to clothes. She wears athletic clothing or very expensive dresses that she looks stunning in, no in-between. Jordan’s pretty sure half of those dresses are things that Charles gave his daughter, anyway, so really Celeste has no fashion sense.

 

There’s only one other person she can think of who’s not at work or finals right now that she can call to complain to, she pulls up his contact and presses  _ Call.  _

 

It rings five times before he answers. “Yo, what’s up?”

 

“The fuck took you so long, Kenny?” 

 

“I’m in the pool! You’re lucky I even heard the phone.”

 

“Wow. I hate that,” Jordan says, heading back down the stairs so she can hole up in her room where she can’t hear the couple’s spat in the kitchen. “Guess what my mom just told me?”

 

“Uh…” Kent trails off. “I actually have no idea.”

 

“She says I can’t wear khakis to graduation!” Kent will definitely understand this. He’s also a gremlin when it comes to fashion. He almost exclusively wears basketball shorts and t-shirts and the same snapbacks every day until they’re falling apart. Sometimes he spices it up and wears flannels but that’s about it. 

 

There’s a pause. “What?”

 

Jordan chuckles. “I know, right?”

 

“You were going to wear  _ khakis?!?”  _

 

Ugh. Just her luck. “Khakis are perfectly fine dressy clothes! Why doesn’t anyone understand that!” 

 

“They absolutely are not. Okay-- listen, we can fix this, easy. I’ll just--” 

 

There’s a splash. For a second, Jordan thinks that Kent has dropped the phone in the pool, but then she hears swearing and more splashing, then Kent someone shushing someone, and it seems like the call is still connected, so she cautiously says, “Kenny, is there someone else in the pool?” 

 

“Uh.” His lack of a response is clear enough. 

 

“Jesus. I’m hanging up.”

 

“I’ll call you back later!” he manages before she ends the call. 

 

Boys. They’re awful.

 

\\_._/

 

And that’s how Jordan finds herself walking the stage at graduation wearing a new three-piece suit, tailored exactly to her measurements. 

 

(“I didn’t even realize that you could get a suit this nice that fast,” Jordan had said.

 

“Just be thankful I’m a millionaire,” Kent said, and Jordan didn’t push it, because that’s a hell of a graduation present.)

 

In fact, in the end, it’s kind of anticlimactic. She gets a framed piece of paper that says she has a degree in Education, which is pretty cool, except she has no idea if she’s going to use it. She’s doing a pretty bad job at this whole adulting thing, honestly. 

 

Anyway. She gets the diploma, shakes hands with a bunch of people she doesn’t know, and waves vaguely in the direction where she thinks her family is sitting.

 

And then she’s off the stage, and college is over.

 

What the fuck. 

 

She makes her way back to her seat, and zones out completely for the rest of the ceremony, just clapping robotically for people she knows. Lauren and Eric already walked, so it’s really only a few more teammates and classmates, and mostly just hundreds of people she doesn’t know.

 

When it’s over, she finds her family-- parents, sisters, grandparents, Kent, and Celeste-- and poses for what feels like a million photos. She tries to mold her face into a smile and it feels awfully plastic, but hopefully it looks real in the pictures. Maybe she’s overheating in her dark gown and cap, but she feels awful. 

 

When Mr. Kelly finally seems to be finishing up with the camera, Celeste slips next to Jordan and puts a hand on the small of her back. “Hey. You look upset.”

 

“I am upset,” says Jordan. 

 

“Okay. Just give me a second.”

 

Celeste sidles up to Mrs. Kelly and lets her know that she and Jordan are going to go for one last walk around campus, real quick. Celeste might have awful people skills most of the time, but she really does know how to charm parents when she puts more than a second of thought into it. 

 

Then she’s back to Jordan and grabbing her hand to drag her away from the crowds of the people. They head across the Lake Quad and end up on one of the bridges stretching across the river. When they get there, Jordan shrugs out of her gown and drops it to the ground. She tosses the cap on top of it a moment later and then leans on the side of the bridge, elbows propped on the ledge, looking out over the water. 

 

“Deep breaths,” says Celeste. 

 

Jordan concentrates on breathing for a minute, and it seems like she’s doing pretty okay until she turns to face Celeste and says, “I love Samwell,” and breaks down into tears.

 

Celeste slips her arms around Jordan’s waist, and Jordan cries into her for a few minutes. She’s a wet, snotty mess of tears and babbling. Celeste rubs her back and pets at her hair.

 

Eventually, Jordan pulls away. “Jesus. I’m being such a baby. Most of you guys already graduated. I just-- I’m going to miss living in a house with all my friends.”

 

“I understand. I really do. But in August you'll be living with teammates again, and then after that you’ll be back with me in Boston and most everyone will be close enough to hang out all the time.”

 

“It’s not the same,” Jordan says. She knows that she sounds like a petulant child, but she’s been doing a good job ignoring these feelings for months, so she figures they were going to come out sooner or later.

 

“It’s not the same,” Celeste agrees.

 

“I’m giving my diploma back. I’ll get another damn degree,” Jordan says.

 

“Jordan.”

 

“Celeste.”

 

Celeste smiles up at her. “If you stay in college, then we're not getting a cat.”

 

Jordan laughs through her messy tears. “Oh, well, in that case, let’s go!” She leans down to give Celeste a quick, chaste kiss, then grabs her by the arm and tugs her back in the direction of the quad where they left her family. 

 

Celeste laughs too, but doesn’t come along, instead staying put and forcing Jordan to turn back around and face her. 

 

“What?” says Jordan.

 

“It’s going to be okay,” says Celeste. “It’s the scariest thing ever right now, but we’ll be fine.”

 

“Yeah,” says Jordan, using her sleeve to wipe at her tears, and then reaching out to use it to wipe at the ones at the corners of Celeste’s eyes, too. They've come a long way. They've come a really, really fucking long way from Jordan's freshman year, and even though she's overwhelmed as shit right now, Jordan is so glad they have each other.

 

Celeste smiles at her, and then looks her up and down. “Okay. I know we’re going out to dinner with your family now, so this is not the time, but you look  _ so fucking hot  _ in that suit. ”

 

“Damn straight I do,” Jordan says, grinning. Maybe everyone was right about the whole formal clothing thing after all.

**Author's Note:**

> Title from 7 Years by Lukas Graham, which is an ICONIQUE song that everyone makes fun of me for liking even though it is THE BEST and an EXCELLENT graduation song and my top song of 2017 according to spotify. 
> 
> Wait, Jordan's going to be living with teammates in the summer of 2017 in Florida? Hmm! I wonder why!
> 
> Shoutout to these poor class of 2019 frogs, Ally Briggs and Katrina Lambert! They started on the team after the events of put that weight on me and as such were not in that fic. Poor girls. Maybe they'll actually get to be in a fic eventually, but today is not that day. 
> 
> As always, comments are greatly appreciated, and you can find me on tumblr where I'm also @hockeydyke!


End file.
